After two solid weeks of research, I have decided on the Canon Vixia HF11. It's flash based, so no moving parts to break down and has higher marks on many review sites for low-light, fast action, and compression artifacts than it's HV30 cousin. Has 32 GB flash memory built-in plus an SD slot that supports up to 32 GB more. And the final nail for me was the lens adapters than let you use Canon and Nikon lenses/filters.

I went with the Canon HV30 and bought a canon wide angle lens adapter. I might get the panasonic GH1 next year if the quality is good enough and the price is right. I will also wait and see if olympus have HD video on their micro 4/3 camera. The HV30 will do for the now and I will only buy another camera if I can fund it from footage sales.

I'm using a 550D most of the time now. Great for stills as well and not too heavy to carry around.

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rinderart

« Reply #11 on: October 31, 2010, 14:35 »

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EX1 and JVC gy100U.....sweet.

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jbarber873

« Reply #12 on: October 31, 2010, 19:17 »

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I started with the Canon hv30, which is a very good camera, and recently switched to the canon rebelt2i. The advantage of the rebel is the ability to easily control f-stop, shutter speed and white balance- all things that were more complex with the hv30. Also, interchangable lenses is a real big plus. Downside is no motorized zoom, but I never use that anyway. I can see a better quality difference from the hv30 to the rebel, but i sell just as many files shot with the hv30, and have had no complaints. Both of these cameras benefit from a well lit scene. If you are working in a studio, you'll need good lighting to get the most out of the image. Try to do as little post processing as possible- get it right in the camera, because the files have very little extra information in them to play around with. You can't go wrong with the hv30 if that's the way you end up going. The whole video thing is very different from print- it takes a while to get a handle on how these clips get used, but it's turning out to be a very good business.